Paper and Ink
by NotACauldronAgent
Summary: How does a man, with no bloodline or special abilities, stand up to a force of nature? How can such a man earn a place alongside the most powerful of legends?
Here I stand, as my village burns around me.

The greatest of the bijuu, the Kyuubi no Youko, fills my vision. Its nine tails sway in some bizarre and unseen wind. A great instrument of destruction, able to level mountains with a casual flick, empires with single attacks. Few could stand against this, beyond even a force of nature, this refined weapon of mass destruction.

No doubt some could fight, and even win. My mentor's team, united, could best it, but here it was not. Each of the three had taken a different path. The first had forsaken the village and chosen power over loyalty. The second left peacefully, needing time to drown her sorrows and memories of her loved ones. The third still served loyally, but rarely stayed in the village for long, choosing to serve Konoha from the shadows. The latter two would have come, had there been warning, but there was none. The four other kages could beat it together, but of them, only Raza would come to my aid. Mist hadn't had a sane ruler in decades, Lightning sought out any advantage over us, and Onoki would never willingly help the one who killed half his village. Had it been any other monster, I would have bet on my beloved, but for the fact that it was her tenant. She would be in no condition to fight any time soon, it would almost certainly kill her.

People had stood up to it before. The first to beat the bijuu were the Uzumaki. Thanks to generations of sealmasters and a powerful bloodline limit, they were the perfect ones to chain a demon. Though hundreds of clanmembers had died in the sealings, the bijuu's constant rampages slowed. In this peace, Civilization could develop and thrive. Sadly, the spiral on our flak jackets is now a memorial, for the island had all but been sank.

The second method for binding a demon, say Senju Mito's notes on the subject, is the Mangekyo Sharingan. The spiral of the Kaleidoscope could mind control even them, if the battle of the end was to be believed. Until today, I believed the last user of the highest stage of the misery eyes, Uchiha Madara, was long dead. However, asking my masked assailant for assistance sounded like a worse joke than most of Obito's.

Finally, the legendary Mokuton possessed great effectiveness against bijuu. Shodai's magnificent wood release was said to have been supremely effective against the demon. The only living practitioner, Tenzou, is still far to young and untrained to be more than an annoyance to the beast. He is still hard pressed to consistently make a wall, let alone a bijuu binding box.

So here I am, the last line of defense my village has.

The village may be damaged, but most of it's inhabitants are safely in the shelter, beneath my feet. The corpses of too many brave shinobi litter the street, buying precious time. Though powerful and many, few were more than distractions against the demonic kitsune. Their death was not in vain, however, as most of the civilians were able to escape to the shelter. Unless something happened soon, it would be for naught, as the shelter could no less stand up to the rampage than a paper wall to a storm.

Sure enough, it began to build its kind's signature technique. All but Shukaku had demonstrated it at one point or another, and the literature said Kyuubi's was the worst. Ocean bays and deep craters still mark terrain where it decided something had annoyed it enough to use the weapon. It would have been a magnificent sight, was it somewhere far away from here. Great swirling tendrils of youkai condensed to form the swirling sphere which had inspired my main offensive technique. Rasengan, which was a dangerous A rank technique in it's own right, had killed by my hand alone thousands of Konoha's enemies during the war. It was nonetheless a shadow in comparison to the might of the bijuudama.

A ninja village is, by necessity, sturdy. Hundreds of ninja on active duty mean dozens training at any time during the day. Training ninja train in Konoha, for safety and continence, for training usually means they aren't good at their jutsu yet. And when dozens of people and Maito Gai get together and practice ninjutsu, taijutsu, and bukijutsu, things break. People living in hidden villages pay the extra needed to buy sturdy homes, because shinobi insurance is bad enough as it is. However, thick stone walls and metal reinforced concrete are swept aside as the bomb rushes towards me and the shelter.

The bomb itself poses no treat to me. I am often regarded as the fastest ninja ever, and am without a doubt the fastest alive today. In a battlefield, dodging is my main defense, as how I fight usually means the attack that would hit me hits their allies instead. Here, I have an objective I must defend. Though the death dealing sphere had been stopped before, most of those were legends themselves. There were no Uchiha or Senju, Otsutsuki or Uzumaki, or anyone else. And what could I do? How could I, a clanless nobody, intelligent but lacking in any sort of bloodline limit, fight this monster?

In the same way I had done everything else. I am not called the most powerful ninja alive for nothing. I had fought back armies by myself. I had fought kages and jinchuuriki, and came out victorious. I earned a place in every bingo book Kumo and Iwa would ever print, S Rank, flee on sight. I have brought entire hidden villages to their knees. How?

Some time and effort, devoted studying, applied intelligence,

and a little paper and ink.

Bijudama raced across the village, undeterred, towards the Hokage monument. Buildings, walls, wards, all meaningless before the might of the juubi, refined through ages. The purest expression of destruction, crafted and launched by the spirit of understanding, seen since the valley of the end. Unstopped, unstoppable, until it approached the monument.

There, four lines of sealing script, eldritch and almost incomprehensible, caught it, and it slowed. A man in a white haori with a flame pattern, holding an oddly shaped kunai in front of him, intoned three words.

"Hiraishin no Jutsu"

And then it was gone.


End file.
